Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2, Chapter 6: the schism.

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At Lynn, on March 10 and 11. 1840, before a large and¹ enthusiastic assembly gathered in quarterly meeting of the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Garrison shaped kindred resolutions more pointedly, affirming ‘that the indifference or open hostility to anti-slavery principles and measures of most of the so-called religious sects, and a great majority of the clergy of the country, constitutes the main Obstruction to the progress of our cause.’ And for the special reproof of the Quaker community of which Lynn was the seat, he² offered, with the necessary exceptions in favor of individuals, the following:

Resolved, That the Society of friends,—by shutting its³ meeting-houses against the advocates of the slave, and by its unchristian attempts to restrain the freedom of such of its members as are abolitionists—has forfeited all claims to be regarded as an anti-slavery society, and practically identified itself with the corrupt pro-slavery sects of the land.⁴

Two other resolutions, bearing the stamp of the editor of the Liberator, and anticipating Mr. Seward's famous dictum as to an ‘irrepressible conflict,’ were also adopted at Lynn, in these words:

Resolved, That Freedom and Slavery are natural and ⁵ irreconcilable enemies; that it is morally impossible for them to endure together in the same nation; and that the existence of the one can only be secured by the destruction of the other.
Resolved, That slavery has exercised a pernicious and most dangerous influence in the affairs of this Union, from its foundation to the present time;⁶ that this influence has increased, is increasing, and cannot be destroyed, except by the destruction of slavery or the Union.

1 Lib. 10.46, 47.

2 Life of J. and L. Mott, p. 141.

3 Lib. 10.46.

4 See Mr. Garrison's twelve charges in support of this resolution (Lib. 10.47). The organs, speaking phrenologically, of modern Quakerism in our country, he found to be ‘approbativeness, cautiousness, acquisitiveness, all uncommonly large, and exercising a predominating influence over all the other faculties.’

5 Lib. 10.46.

6 ‘It gave us,’ wrote Mr. Garrison, later in the year, ‘the Embargo— and how much were the interests of the North benefited by that insane act? It gave us the last war—and what did that war effect but the frightful accumulation of a national debt, which has had to be liquidated mainly at the expense of Northern industry? It gave us a national bank, and has also destroyed it—and what has been the advantage of that experiment to the free States? It gave us the tariff—and for a time succeeded in its malignant purpose of crippling the commerce and paralyzing the free labor of the North; and now it finds that Northern skill and industry have turned it to profitable account, it is for destroying the tariff. It has given us a sub-treasury—and the next thing it contemplates is the destruction of the sub-treasury’ (Lib. 10.179).

The Century Company. , 1885-1889.

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Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

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